


Assumptions

by cirquedusorrel



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bisexual Character, F/M, Heteronormativity, M/M, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson headcanon background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-19 00:36:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1448791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirquedusorrel/pseuds/cirquedusorrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha is not going to assume. Just because Steve is actually smiling at Sam Wilson doesn't mean anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Assumptions

Natasha is not going to _assume._ Just because Steve is actually smiling at Sam Wilson doesn’t mean anything. It could just be a lack of socialization with the opposite gender due to 1940’s codes of gender division means that he feels more comfortable with men. Steve could just be awkward with women and that’s why she’s never seen him smile like that.

When she was prepping the files and doing psych reports for potential Avengers, she’d seen all the old videos of Steve with the Howling Commandos. She’d watched all the ones where he’d actually smiled at James Barnes with fascination. It had intrigued her enough that she’d dug deeper but she was as certain as she could get that Steve Rogers wasn’t in love with James Buchanan Barnes like he was with Peggy Carter. Barnes had been his brother and family was something that Rogers prized highly. It’d broken his heart that he’d missed on his chance to be with Peggy Carter, but it’d broken him when he’d lost the one piece of family he’d had left. All this was in the report she’d given to Fury with the explicit instructions _not_ to show it to Steve like he’d shown her last one to Tony Stark.

She supposed she’d naturally assumed (and she blames a heteronormative attitude for this which means she’ll have to go through old psych reports to adjust old assump—oh except not because SHIELD is no more) that his liking Peggy indicated that he liked only women. She should know better. Just because he’d loved Peggy Carter didn’t presuppose he couldn’t like men as well.

It’s not till the end of SHIELD that she really thinks this through. She wasn’t able to set Steve up with any of the women she knows from SHIELD, but as she leaves him with Sam Wilson, she realizes that maybe Steve is perfectly capable of finding dates for himself.

**********

Even though the repeal of DADT came with warnings from his commanders not to actually out himself in case the rule was renewed without warning, there is a part of Sam Wilson that relaxes. He’s not really the kind of guy that likes to hide things about himself even if it’s only by omission. Mostly he’d spent the years before 2010 unwilling to lie, so he learned the value of raised eyebrows and pointed silence. Still its not like there’s a lack of homophobia in the ranks and he’s got places he wants to be (free-falling from a plane with the most amazing technology strapped to his back for instance). He knows a few lesbian airmen and maybe he asks a few of them out for dinner—loudly—in front of some gossipy soldiers. Sam knows the value of assumptions and he’s spent the night on quite a few couches so him and Corporal Sanger or Sergeant Holt or Corporal Tran can come in together looking a bit messy.

Everyone assumes that he likes women then because most of the airmen that would care enough to report him don’t really get concepts like bisexuality. Riley jokes that sexual binaries is what saves the day.

(It turned out that Corporal Tran was also interested in men, though she took his apologetic rejection well even if she demanded he still pay for her dinner.)

After DADT is repealed, he does his second tour overseas. One day Riley’s joking that he’s always wanted to give one of Sam’s boyfriends the shovel talk and the next he’s gone. When Sam retires, he’s broken and tired. He’s having panic attacks every time he’s left alone, reimagining the moment just before Riley had been shot down.

  He goes home to Harlem and his parents who watch him day after day as he doesn’t sleep. They’d only met Riley twice, but they leave an empty space next to him like they can sense he carries Riley’s ghost with him.

 His mother asks him once—if he’d be in love with Riley. His mother has never quite got the hang of his sexuality that his father had but she’d never shied away from just asking him. She told him that she’d spent so many years assuming he liked girls, that now she’d just assume he could like anyone till he told her otherwise. Still she only introduced him to nice _boys_ from his dad’s church.

Sam says, “He was my brother.” His mother doesn’t really get it. She looks relieved that he wasn’t in love with Riley and so when he gets worse—zoning out in conversations—she sends him to his dad’s church. His dad is a pastor and infinitely better at emotions, but Sam has never really found the same comfort in God. His dad hugs him and sends him to a therapist from his church that works with veterans. It’s through him that he starts going to PTSD groups. It leads him back down to Washington D.C. for a job at the VA once he actually gets the required schooling to be a vet. He heals as he helps others heal. It makes him realize how alike he is to his father because talking to people is something that seems to come naturally.

Washington D.C. is an interesting place for an openly gay black former airman. When he first starts to work at the VA, he starts to fall into old patterns. At the end of the first month during a late lunch his coworker is bemoaning the lack of LGBTQ counselors to support the growing number of out veterans and Sam almost doesn’t speak up. His time in the military had changed him more than he’d thought. He’d dated openly in college but years of lying in the military have taught him to hide that part of himself.

It’s hard to find dates in the capital. Sam Wilson doesn’t care to entertain closeted politicians or businessmen even though he sympathizes. The veterans he works with need help, not candlelit dinners. Sam starts to occupy his free time in other ways; the productive ways he tells his patients—he starts to jog in the mornings.

**********

Steve Rogers thinks he might buy a t-shirt that says “Officially Tired of Assumptions” the second week of his mission to track down Bucky and his past. In the ‘30s, bullies had assumed he wouldn’t fight back. Men at the bars he and Bucky used to go to had assumed he was only there because he couldn’t find a girl who’d want him. Senator Brandt had assumed that he’d had no purpose beyond performing with chorus girls.

Things are different in the 21st century. There’s a word now for what he is now—bisexual. He likes it because he likes being able to say who he is.

It’d taken him a long time after the Battle of New York to go see Peggy and acknowledge that they would never have that dance. He’d come to terms with the grief if not the loss itself only to find that ‘Captain America’ was no longer just a super powered soldier fighting Nazis, but a symbol for American masculinity. Which was the long way to say that no guy seemed to realize that he was flirting with them because they assumed Captain America had to be straight.

When he first sees Sam Wilson it’s from behind and he thinks extremely charitable thoughts about what he can see. He recognizes a soldier when he sees one and the first, “on your left,” is so he doesn’t take him off guard. Steve swears. The next one is cause he’s seen the guy’s face and the third is cause he’s heard the guy’s frustrated laugh. He’ll admit that the fifth time is a bit childish but he’s never pretended he was good at flirting.

He’s glad that Sam waits for him under the tree. That he allows him to introduce himself because then he finds himself honest to God smiling. If Steve can pinpoint the moment he knew that Sam Wilson would mean something special to him, it’s that he makes him laugh like only Bucky had the first time they meet.

He’s also pretty sure that Sam checks him out as he walks away.

As Natasha drives them away, Steve thinks Bucky would have laughed to see him crush so hard on someone he’s just met and for once thinking of Bucky doesn’t hurt. Natasha’s been telling him to try dating so he focuses on the memory of Sam’s smile and tries to nonchalantly hang around the VA like he belongs.

Then he has to leave to find Bucky and HYDRA. Sam is at his side and Steve is—well stressed. Sam’s at his side day in and day out. They share a hotel room for safety. Sam is always just a few feet away from him on any given day and Steve would maybe like to get laid.

He’s come out of a shower with the smallest towel he could find tied around his waist and pressed his entire body against Sam’s back ostensibly leaning over him to see something on the computer screen. Sam didn’t even tense. He just shifted over to accommodate Steve. If it was anyone else he’d probably let it go, but he really likes Sam. The next time they swing by D.C., he’ll introduce Sam to Peggy likes. He’s not even incapable of asking Sam on dates. Sam just keeps assuming that he’s being sarcastic.

It’s been a long frustrating day a month into their mission when Sam suggests they go to a pub nearby their hotel in Austin to relax. Steve can’t get drunk but alcohol tastes so much better nowadays that he doesn’t mind just drinking to spend time with Sam.

Sam gets them a booth off to the side where they can drink in peace. When he goes to get them more drinks from the bar he’s waylaid by a few girls that he gently brushes off. Steve can see him talking to the bartender and pulls out his phone to send a quick text to Natasha updating her on their lack of progress. When he looks up again, Sam is still at the bar. The bartender, a young man with tattoos up his arms and a facial piercing, is leaning forward towards Sam.

Steve can recognize that kind of interest from half a room away. The kind of smile people get when they flirt with Sam. He tries incredibly hard not to make character judgments based on the tattoos. Just because they’d been frowned upon in his day, didn’t mean they held the same meaning now. He frowns at Sam’s answering laugh. Maybe this was the kind of guy Sam preferred. The bartender hands Sam two drinks and then as Sam is about to walk away, a napkin. Sam shakes his head no apologetically and nods in Steve’s direction.

Steve feels guilty. Even if Sam hadn’t wanted him, it shouldn’t stop him from finding some company on their trip. When Sam comes back to their booth and sets a beer down in front of him he has to say, “You could have taken him up on the offer, you know. I can entertain myself for the night.”

Sam looks surprised, “Who—the bartender?”

“The bartender who just gave you his number. You should take him up on it.” Steve responds.

“He was just offering to show me around Austin since I’ve never been here before.” Sam’s face looks completely innocuous. Steve is starting to have a horrible realization dawn upon him.

“I would too, if someone as attractive as you was new to town.”

“Wait. Are you saying he was _flirting_ with me?” Sam sputters amazed. Steve is realizing that Sam is incapable of recognizing flirting. He waits for Sam.

“Wait. You think I’m attractive?”

Steve looks Sam in the eyes. “Sam, I’m bisexual. I find you attractive. If you are amenable, I’d like to take you to bed and date you in whichever order you would like.”

“You’ve been flirting with me?”

Steve nods his head.

“All this time?”

Steve nods his head again.

Sam leans back in the booth and barks out a laugh. He drags his hand down his face and sighs. He looks at Steve, “Are you done with that drink yet?”

“No, why?”

“Man, it’s been weeks. Have you seen you? Because I’ve seen you in a towel. I’m pretty sure we could get back to the hotel and be naked in 10 minutes.”

Steve laughs—as he puts down his drink and pulls Sam towards the door. He’s not that thirsty anyways.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a thought about assumptions as the title evidences, and then morphed into a weird attempt to flesh out Sam Wilson’s backstory by smushing together the comics and MCU. 
> 
> The only part of the original Sam Wilson’s backstory I used was that his father was a preacher and they lived in a bad neighborhood. Skipped his father dying, mother dying, and subsequent descent into crime because I agree with Anthony Mackie about not really liking the thug stereotype.
> 
> The term bisexual has been around since 1914 but I don’t think Steve Rogers, poor Brooklyn kid, would have heard of it. Though the history of the existence of terms for sexuality is really interesting—homosexuality was created before heterosexuality was, since it was necessary to define the other in order to draw a line between it and what was considered socially acceptable.


End file.
